Thursday isn’t the most obvious time for a day off but hey, there you go, that’s what I’ve got and it’s actually a lovely, blustery, damp, sunny day.
So I thought I’d check out the new exhibition at the Tramway, another video installation only this time it’s by Glaswegian artist Aileen Campbell.
Born in Greenock in 1968, she graduated from the Art School three years ago. Her work is particularly close to my heart as it explores unknown structures of music combined with a kind of parallel visual structure – or at least that’s what I get from this piece and the accompanying blurb.
Upon entering the darkened room where the installation is kept you are faced with three fairly large projections each displaying footage of, from left to right, Aileen herself singing atonally in what looks like a spartan Glasgow flat (you can just tell) in the middle is an older gentleman playing atonally on a pipe organ (in a Glasgow flat) and the final screen is of a younger lass slowly climbing the stairwell of a tenement flat, lugging an old doublebass, pausing occasionally to play with the bow (though avoiding at any time dragging the horsehair against the strings), you guessed it, atonally.
Despite myself I found it hypnotic and engaging. I liked the familiarity of the film – my father plays both the doublebass and the pipe organ (he’s actually got a Hammond with Leslie speakers) – and the organist’s dog makes an appearance looking altogether less than comfortable with his owner’s cacophony. Definitely worth a look.
Onto matters two wheels now. When cycling about the city it’s often a pain in the bahookie to find somewhere to lock my bike whenever I stop to go into a shop or wherever so like most cyclists I tie mine up to metal railings, lamp posts and, my personal favourite, car parking meters. Trouble is, they’re often difficult to lock to and can get in the way of folk if you aren’t careful. There’s really very few well lit places for bikes and all the good ones are over subscribed. I’d say, at a conservative estimate, there are about, ooh, one hundred car parking spaces for every bike rack.
Unlike Glasgow, New York is a city that’s noticed this problem. The cities powers that be ran a competition to find attractive and practical designs for new places to lock bikes and in a rather lovely move David Byrne has joined the fray and made his own cool designs:
I’d love to lock my bike to one of those racks! It would be so cool if Glasgow did a similar thing and got local artists to do the same, doncha think?
Glasgow Fields 